Although there are older and more inefficient methods for finding a logarithm, the most recent and relevant prior art for finding the logarithm of a number comes from one of: P. K. Peter Tang, in "Table-Driven Implementation of the Logarithm Function in IEEE Floating Point Arithmetic", ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 16, 1990, 378-400; and Shmuel Gal and Boris Bachelis, "An Accurate Elementary Mathematical Library for the IEEE Floating Point Standard", ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 17, 1991, 26-45. Both of the above techniques must check for several special logarithm cases which is very slow and inefficient. Both of the techniques taught by the references above use a compare statement to branch processing off into one of two paths (i.e., a bipolar process). This determination of which path to take is slow and also inefficient. In addition, the prior art contains operations which are more complex and less likely to perform in parallel and therefore slow the logarithm-finding process. A faster method of finding the logarithm of a number in a data processor is needed.